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Lethal violence in Sweden at highest level in nearly 20 years: report

The Local Sweden
The Local Sweden - [email protected]
Lethal violence in Sweden at highest level in nearly 20 years: report
Police cordon off the crime scene after a shooting in Solna, Stockholm, in February. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

Sweden last year suffered the highest level of murder and manslaughter for at least 18 years, with 124 people losing their lives through violent attacks, according to the latest annual report from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå).

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According to the report, last year saw the highest number of lethal violence cases since it began recording them in 2002.

"We had a declining trend of lethal violence which came to an end in 2012, and it's lethal violence in criminal environments which is behind the increasing number of deaths," Brå researcher Jonas Öberg told the Aftonbladet newspaper. "Lethal violence within couples is not growing."

A full 48 of the 124 cases of lethal violence involved guns, with the number of fatal shootings in the Stockholm region more than doubling over the past two years, with 11 people shot dead in 2018, 18 in 2019 and 23 in 2020, according to the agency's report on lethal violence

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Öberg said that it was hard to say why there had been a higher level of lethal violence last year, and warned against seeking to pin the rise on a simple explanation like the ongoing pandemic.

"This is men killing men, and it's young men, between 20-29 years old," he said. "And it mostly involves guns, and it most of these murders happen outside."

Here's a chart from the report showing how the rise since 2012 has been entirely among men and boys (män/pojkar), which lethal violence involving women or girls slightly down. 

Here's a chart from the report showing how the number of cases of lethal violence using a gun (med användning av skjutvapen), has risen almost every year since 2016. 

The total number of reported crimes overall increased by only one percent on 2019, with a total of 1.57m crimes reported, according to the agency's main report for 2020.

Vandalism and drugs offences saw the sharpest rises, with 14 percent and 10 percent rise in reported cases respectively.

Brå researcher Stina Söderman said that the rise in drugs offences might simply reflect the fact that police have had more resources to focus on narcotics crimes as a result of the pandemic.

"They have cancelled all of their education programmes for instance, which has freed up a lot of time," she told Aftonbladet.

Several crimes saw large reductions which Brå argued could be directly linked to the pandemic: reports of pickpocketing fell by 44 percent; reports of robberies in hotels, cafés, restaurants, cinemas, theatres and youth centres by 40 percent; and of robberies in schools, libraries, sports centres, churches and museums by 22 percent.

"Our judgement is that the reduction of these types of robberies is a consequence of the pandemic," the report concluded.

Other crimes which saw a sharp drop in reports were 'assault by an unknown person', reports of which fell 12 percent for men and 10 percent for women on 2019, which the report said was also "probably affected by the pandemic".

The number of reported rapes also grew by nine percent in 2020, with 9,360 rapes reported, but Brå researcher Stina Holmberg said that the agency's analysis suggested that this was not linked to the pandemic.

"We have looked at it month-by-month and have not identified any pandemic effect," she told Aftonbladet. "I think it started already before the pandemic arrives, and we haven't seen any signs of anything happening in society, which would have had an effect which led to more rapes."

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At the same time, the number of reported assaults from someone known to the victim rose slightly, by 5 percent for women and 3 percent for men. 

There was also a strong regional variation in fatal shootings, with both the southern region, which includes Malmö, and the western region, which includes Gothenburg, seeing the number more than halve over the past two years.

The southern region had 13 fatal shootings in 2018, 11 in 2019 and just 6 in 2020, while the western region had 9 fatal shootings in 2018, 3 in 2019 and 4 in 2020.

Local police in Malmö have linked the fall in gun violence to both Operation Hoarfrost (Rimfrost), a concentration of police force in the city between November 2019 and April 2020, and to Sluta Skjut or 'Stop Shooting', a campaign based on the Group Violence Intervention anti-gang strategy pioneered in the US.

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After Brå's report, the opposition Moderate Party called for Sweden to increase the number of police in Stockholm to reduce the amount of violent crime in the city. 

"It's noteworthy that the number of police in Stockholm is lower than it was five years ago," Johan Forsell, the party's justice spokesperson, told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

"It's strange that the government time after time chooses to send reinforcements to Malmö, for instance, but we haven't seen similar shows of force in Stockholm."

 

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